question Why are there close to none powerhouse laptops with integrated graphics only?

[vega_D]

Thunderbolt 3 interface with eGPU support is around for 5 years already, and eGPUs are quite popular in ultrabook segment. But for very long so many laptops capable of thunderbolt connectivity and laptops where it's actively used for eGPU were dual-core machines on U series intel CPUs and since 8th gen - quad-core U series intel CPUs. Why are there no (almost) H intel series laptops with integrated graphics only!?

There's so many nice gaming laptops with i7-8750h CPU which just rocks mobile gaming/workstation PC space for years already with pretty successful successors in form of 9th gen i7-9750h and 10th gen i7-10750h.

Intel is past 3 generations of high performing mobile CPUs but every integrated graphics solution is based on either U series low wattage CPU or some form of AMD CPU.

Why not just make a laptop able to have type-c charging, long battery life and powerful CPU in one package!? Well, there's one.
Behold, a Lenovo Legion Y740S, lately renamed into Y740Si. It's literally the only laptop on the market I could find which has 6 core CPU and no discrete graphics chip built in. And I absolutely would love to use that machine! But weirdly it's availability is very limited to some countries and mine isn't one of those.

I'd love to hear out what laptops like y740s i missed, since I'm considering upgrading from my legion y530 and I want to switch over to eGPU setup but don't want to give up on high performing CPU.
 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[jaslion]

Because a laptop is just that. A portable device and what isn't easily portable? A gpu dock. The point of a laptop is to be able to take a machine on the go and a powerful cpu machine usually needs a nice gpu. There are plenty of business laptops with high end cpu's and integrated/basic gpu's as they may need to do different tasks. But for consumers it's basically powerful cpu + gpu as well most people that need a powerful cpu are gaming or also need a good gpu.

 

Also thunderbolt 3 is just a pcie 3.0 x4 interface it gets saturated by a rx 580 and after that putting in a more powerful gpu results in very little performance gained due to the bandwith limits.

[vega_D]

8 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Because a laptop is just that. A portable device and what isn't easily portable? A gpu dock. The point of a laptop is to be able to take a machine on the go and a powerful cpu machine usually needs a nice gpu. There are plenty of business laptops with high end cpu's and integrated/basic gpu's as they may need to do different tasks. But for consumers it's basically powerful cpu + gpu as well most people that need a powerful cpu are gaming or also need a good gpu.

 

Also thunderbolt 3 is just a pcie 3.0 x4 interface it gets saturated by a rx 580 and after that putting in a more powerful gpu results in very little performance gained due to the bandwith limits.

True and True, kinda? You don't always need a lot of GPU power but when you do you probably have at least a charger with you. Carrying around a small eGPU dock with 1650 which also can charge your laptop would make sense, in my opinion. I decided to go eGPU because discrete graphics in laptops can't get to it's maximum potential because of tdp limits. It might be just exchanging soap for lubricant but from my usage experience if I'm on the go I'm simply afraid to do `# prime-select nvidia` and see my battery go to 0 in less than a hour.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, vega_D said:

True and True, kinda? You don't always need a lot of GPU power but when you do you probably have at least a charger with you. Carrying around a small eGPU dock with 1650 which also can charge your laptop would make sense, in my opinion. I decided to go eGPU because discrete graphics in laptops can't get to it's maximum potential because of tdp limits. It might be just exchanging soap for lubricant but from my usage experience if I'm on the go I'm simply afraid to do `# prime-select nvidia` and see my battery go to 0 in less than a hour.

Even a small dock is still a big brick. Then I'd much prefer a regular 15 inch laptop with decent cooling than having to carry around and constantly make a whole setup just to get some power into my laptop.

 

Nowadays gaming laptops seem to have pretty great battery too (especially the amd side) so really egpu for me at least is not worth all the hassle and cost.

[vega_D]

2 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Even a small dock is still a big brick. Then I'd much prefer a regular 15 inch laptop with decent cooling than having to carry around and constantly make a whole setup just to get some power into my laptop.

 

Nowadays gaming laptops seem to have pretty great battery too (especially the amd side) so really egpu for me at least is not worth all the hassle and cost.

I'm considering eGPU mostly because it will save me a buck in long-term. GPUs get old faster than CPUs and I don't want to switch laptops each year or two. And with eGPU you can just switch gpu in it once a while and be up to spec. My current laptop has 6 core CPU i'm perfectly happy with but battery life SUCKS. I barely get two and a half hours of battery life with dGPU being entirely off. That's with intensive web coding on max brightness of course but still bad. I carry around a pretty massive 200w power brick which also gets quite toasty as well and I really hate not-type-c charging.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, vega_D said:

I'm considering eGPU mostly because it will save me a buck in long-term. GPUs get old faster than CPUs and I don't want to switch laptops each year or two. And with eGPU you can just switch gpu in it once a while and be up to spec. My current laptop has 6 core CPU i'm perfectly happy with but battery life SUCKS. I barely get two and a half hours of battery life with dGPU being entirely off. That's with intensive web coding on max brightness of course but still bad. I carry around a pretty massive 200w power brick which also gets quite toasty as well and I really hate not-type-c charging.

To each their own. I am still on my 5 year old 6700hq 970m laptop and just recently (like a week ago) finally got the place to switch to my desktop I had made for dirtcheap from used parts I managed to snag over time. My laptop is still plenty good for my tasks (part from gaming but whatever that is not an important thing anyways) so I do not have a need for a replacement yet. Epgu would have been nice for it but really it's not a dealbreaker.

[vega_D]

30 minutes ago, jaslion said:

There are plenty of business laptops with high end cpu's and integrated/basic gpu's

I'd actually like to hear what are those? I was looking at T490 but it's quadcore max.

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, vega_D said:

I'd actually like to hear what are those? I was looking at T490 but it's quadcore max.

Of the top of my head I only remember the name of the dell latitude 5491. But a lot of those laptops come with a little different cpu often like a i7 8850h instead of a 8750h. This latitude can have thunderbolt and has a mx130 for a little extra gpu horsepower.

[vega_D]

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Of the top of my head I only remember the name of the dell latitude 5491. But a lot of those laptops come with a little different cpu often like a i7 8850h instead of a 8750h. This latitude can have thunderbolt and has a mx130 for a little extra gpu horsepower.

wow that's pretty much exactly what i want from a laptop but sadly it's unavailable in my country

[jaslion]

Just now, vega_D said:

wow that's pretty much exactly what i want from a laptop but sadly it's unavailable in my country

Oh yeah it's older. Got one used recently from ebay for 640€ for someone that needed the cpu power but not gpu and needed something only a intel cpu had. However for you I see your perfect laptop come with usb4. Ryzen gets access to thunderbolt then and voila super portable crazy efficient and powerful laptop with option for a nice gpu.